Senior defence officials have privately contradicted the Trump administration's public justification for striking Iran, telling CNN that key intelligence does not support claims of an imminent threat.
The White House launched joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and igniting a wider regional war, yet two of the central arguments used to sell the action to the public have since been undermined by the very intelligence agencies responsible for making those assessments.
